MHD Turbulence and Cosmic Rays

Andrey BeresnyakLANL

The Universe is filled with ionized plasma, that can be described by
magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) on large scales and high energy particles
called cosmic rays. It turns out that cosmic rays are dynamically
important in many environments, such as the disk of our
Galaxy. We also understand that cosmic ray acceleration in shocks must
necessarily involve MHD turbulence produced by CRs
in front of the shock. MHD turbulence by itself is an extremely
exciting subject which allowed us to formulate some new universality
claims regarding its spectral properties and time evolution. Not
surprisingly, the interaction of MHD turbulence with cosmic rays
is even more interesting and I will be talking about some work in
progress and some new tools that we are developing in this direction.